Mircea Eliade
Historian of religion and novelist
Mircea Eliade was a Romanian historian of religion, philosopher and fiction writer who taught at the University of Chicago. His book The Sacred and the Profane is in our catalog.
1 summary 14 min of listening
American Born 1907 in Bucharest, Romania Died 1986
About Mircea Eliade
Mircea Eliade was born in Bucharest, Romania, on 13 March 1907 and died on 22 April 1986. He worked as a historian of religion, philosopher and fiction writer, and he was a professor at the University of Chicago. He could work in five languages and read three more. As a scholar he proposed that hierophanies (manifestations of the sacred) are the basis of religion, dividing human experience into sacred and profane space and time. He also developed a theory of eternal return, and his book The Myth of the Eternal Return brought him international fame. Eliade also wrote fantastic and autobiographical fiction, including the novels Maitreyi and Noaptea de Sânziene. Earlier in life he was a journalist and essayist, and in the 1940s he served as a Romanian cultural attaché in the United Kingdom and Portugal. The Romanian Academy named him a member in 1990, after his death.